The Most Controversial Films of All Time: Films always have the ability to anger us, divide us, shock us, disgust us, and more. Usually, films that inspire controversy, outright boycotting, picketing, banning, censorship, or protest have graphic sex, violence, homosexuality, religious, political or race-related themes and content. They usually push the envelope regarding what can be filmed and displayed on the screen, and are considered taboo, "immoral" or "obscene" due to language, drug use, violence and sensuality/nudity or other incendiary elements. Inevitably, controversy helps to publicize these films and fuel the box-office receipts.

Controversy-invoking films may be from almost any genre - documentaries, westerns, erotic-thrillers, dramas, horror, comedy, or animated, and more. Standards for what may be considered shocking, offensive or controversial have changed drastically over many decades.The voluntary ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of America can influence a film's public showing in a theatre -- an NC-17 rating or an unrated film may often close down a film's screening and lead to commercial failure.

The following illustrated list in the next few web pages, in unranked alphabetical order, presents a solid collection of the most controversial films in cinematic history. Entertainment Weekly's June 16, 2006 issue contained a listing of their top 25 "Most Controversial Movies of All-Time" - included here and indicated with the # numbers after the film title, in this more comprehensive list.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". For the many other milestone films with sexual scenes that were especially notorious, infamous, controversial, or scandalous, see this site's special writeups on Sex in Cinema and the genre of Sexual/Erotic Films.

Aladdin (1992) # 25
D. Ron Clements and John Musker

This Walt Disney feature film animation engendered considerable controversy for its pro-Western portrayal of Aladdin and Jasmine (always unveiled), the fact that turbaned characters were bald, and all the villainous characters were Arab caricatures.

Another conflict arose, following protests from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), regarding the lyrics in one of the verses of the opening song "Arabian Nights." The original lyric about the film's Arabian setting ("Where they cut off your ears if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home") was censored/dubbed out and changed to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" for subsequent video releases in 1993 and for the re-released soundtrack.

Baby Doll (1956) # 10
D. Elia Kazan

Elia Kazan's film (based on Tennessee Williams' play) told about a thumb-sucking, white-trash, 19 year-old virginal 'baby doll' child bride (Carroll Baker) who was married (but unconsummated) to Mississippi cotton gin operator Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), and seduced by a competing vengeful Sicilian cotton-gin owner Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach in his film debut). In the opening scenes, Baby Doll was crib-bound in nursery furniture, spied upon through a wall by her 'peeping tom' husband, and given no privacy while taking a bath.

The defiant film was a pot-boiling, condemned, and censored drama (by the Catholic Legion of Decency) - it was viciously condemned for, among other things, a notorious, highly-sexual seduction scene on a swing, of the young 'baby doll' nymphet by Vacarro to get her to sign a letter about Archie's guilt, their game of hide-and-seek in the upstairs (and attic), and later their kissing scene under a turned-off bare bulb in an adjoining room while Baby Doll's sexually-frustrated husband Archie was speaking on the phone nearby.

The Oscar-nominated film (with four nominations, but no wins, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) was called notorious, salacious, revolting, dirty, steamy, lewd, suggestive, morally repellent and provocative. Time Magazine was noted as stating: "Just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited..." New York's Cardinal Spellman declared the film "evil in concept... certain to exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it." The stark, controversial, black and white film was so viciously denounced by the Legion of Decency upon its release with a "C" (or condemned) rating that many theaters were forced to cancel their showings, but it still did moderately well at the box office despite the uproar.

Baise Moi (2000, Fr.) (translated "Screw or F--k Me")
D. Virginie Despentes

This daring and scandalous, unrated art-house import about heartless and irrational female sexual rage by two hardened and randy females was the first collaboration between French film-maker Virginie Despentes and former porn actress Coralie Trinh Thi. The two main characters were lower class French 'bad girls' named Manu (Raffaela Anderson) and prostitute Nadine (Karine Bach/Karen Lancaume), who were portrayed by French adult film stars. After being pushed around by losers and low-lifes in their seedy, marginal neighborhood, they decided to engage in a shooting spree and sexual romp across France.

The French film was a very violent, sensationalist, bold, graphic and hard-core sex-filled version of Natural Born Killers and Thelma & Louise - a nihilistic and self-destructive road picture that ran into extreme protest and controversy. It was banned in France, its native country of release, for its porno-style, animalistic sexuality (fellatio included), explicit and brutal rape scene (of Manu) in a parking lot, and randomly vengeful violence spree on both men and women.

Bandit Queen (1994, India)
D. Shekhar Kapur

This biodrama (in Hindi with subtitles) told the true-life legendary story of indomitable female folk outlaw-heroine Phoolan Devi (portrayed by Seema Biswas). It was based upon Devi's "dictated prison diaries," made after she was arrested, in real life, in 1983, and imprisoned for eleven years. [She ran for Parliament in 1996 and was assassinated in 2001 when she was just 37, reportedly to avenge the Behmai Massacre.]

It portrayed many scenes of her continued rape and sexual humiliation in her society. As a lower-caste Indian girl, she was married off at age 11 (Sunita Bhatt), and repeatedly 'raped' and ill-treated by her husband. After she left her husband (and was now regarded as a loose woman and fair game), she became defiant against forced female subservience, which led to her banishment as a social outcast from her patriarchal-based village.

After being arrested (framed for a robbery), raped, and beaten in prison, she was kidnapped by a local gang of bandits and again, raped, but won the respect and love of the gang's temporary leader Vikram Mallah (Nirmal Pandey), who became her lover and eventually made her co-leader (with resemblances to Bonnie and Clyde and Robin Hood tales). When jealous upper-caste Thakurs returned to rule the bandits in the village, they killed Mallah, gang-raped Devi (for three-days), and forced her to walk naked through the village's main streets to fetch water from the well. Her retaliatory vengeance took the form of a brutal massacre that killed 20 upper caste men in Behmai (in Uttar Pradesh) where she was assaulted. Her last defiant words in the film were: "I am Phoolan Devi, you sisterf--kers."

Due to its controversial nature, consciousness-raising and powerful indictment of Indian society (for its sexism, ritual misogyny, and the inequalities of the caste system), it was banned in India by censors due to its nudity, sex and violence. Devi herself issued her own lawsuit in an effort to prevent its release. Bandit Queen was financed by Britain's Channel Four, and received critical acclaim at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, and at the 1995 New Directors New Films Festival in New York.

Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas created this exploitative, soft-porn, excessive, controversial film known for its negative portrayal of lesbianism, offensive violence, initial X-rating, and voyeuristic, sensational, gratuitous sex. Sharon Stone starred as bisexual authoress Catherine Trammel who became a murder suspect (known for using an ice pick). The opening scene of a naked couple engaged in rough sex in a mirrored boudoir ended with an ice-pick stabbing. Frank and raw dialogue, such as this much-quoted line ("How about we f--k like minks, raise rug rats, and live happily ever after"), was woven throughout.

The film was also criticized for its rough near-rape sex scene between detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) and his police psychologist 'girlfriend' Jeanne Tripplehorn when he ripped off her clothes and took her from behind. The R-rated film (initially rated NC-17) also gained notoriety for the film's interrogation scene in which Sharon Stone brazenly talked about sex, smoked (in a no-smoking area), and uncrossed and re-crossed her legs while wearing a short white mini-dress (without panties). Douglas also flashed his bare backside after being watched having rough-house, bondage-style sex with Stone, to her leather-clad lesbian consort Roxy (Leilani Sarelle).

Womens' groups called the film misogynistic, and gay-rights groups in San Francisco (including The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)) called it stereotypically-homophobic and gay-bashing. They charged that the main murderess suspect in the film was a denegrating portrayal since she was a mentally-unstable, psychotic lesbian and bi-sexual that was potentially homicidal. Activists groups such as Queer Nation and ACT-UP protested at multiple San Francisco shooting locations, chanting "Hollywood, you stink" and they attempted to disrupt filming.

The Birth Of A Nation (1915) # 7
D. D. W. Griffith

This groundbreaking, landmark American film masterpiece about two families during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods was also extremely controversial and explicitly racist. It was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted play, The Clansman, the second volume in a trilogy.

Its release set up a major censorship battle over its extremist depiction of African Americans, although Griffith naively claimed that he wasn't racist at the time. Unbelievably, the film is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership - and in fact, the organization experienced a revival and membership peak in the decade immediately following its initial release. And the film stirred new controversy when it was voted into the National Film Registry in 1993, and when it was voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" (at # 44) by the American Film Institute in 1998.

The subject matter of the film caused immediate criticism by the newly-created National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for its racist and "vicious" portrayal of blacks, its proclamation of miscegenation, its pro-Klan stance, and its endorsement of enslavement. As a result, two scenes were cut (a love scene between Reconstructionist Senator and his mulatto mistress, and a fight scene).

In the scenes that remained, one recreated the first historic session of the legislature during Reconstruction, in which freed negro legislators were luridly and angrily portrayed as mocking the ideals of the Old South and shown as power-crazy, shiftless, lazy, idiotic, sitting shoeless (sprawled with bare feet upon their desks) and drinking in their legislature seats. In another, mulatto leader Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), lusting for power and miscegenation, attempted to force marriage upon Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish) - by force if necessary. During the most famous sequence in the film, excitement was heightened by shots of the Klan alternating with shots of the endangered Elsie - the film exhibited masterful parallel editing. Along a country road, the Klansman rode to their appointed mission - to first rescue Elsie, and then to rescue the entire Cameron family along with one of the Stoneman boys. In a diagonally-angled shot, a long line of KKK riders came into view from the distance.

The film was thoroughly renounced as "the meanest vilification of the Negro race" and for its depiction of blacks as childlike, conniving, and sexually animalistic. Riots broke out in major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, among others), and it was denied release in many other places (Chicago, Ohio, Denver, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, eight states in total). Subsequent lawsuits and picketing tailed the film for years when it was re-released (in 1924, 1931, and 1938). Ironically, although the film was advertised as authentic and accurate, the film's major black roles in the film -- including the Senator's mulatto mistress, the mulatto politican brought to power in the South, and faithful freed slaves -- were stereotypically played and filled by white actors - in blackface. [The real blacks in the film only played in minor roles.]

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) (aka The Incredible Torture Show and Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins)
D. Joel Reed

This unredeeming, misogynistic and depraved grindhouse horror exploitation film from Troma Entertainment was originally unrated, due to its controversial and violent nature, but later reduced to an R-rating when cuts were administered. Voted one of the worst films ever, it was also targeted by the feminist group Women Against Pornography for its depictions of violence against women. It was reminiscent of Herschell Gordon Lewis's earlier film The Wizard of Gore (1970).

This low-budget nauseating film told about a macabre Grand Guignol-type theatre in New York run by sadomasochistic Master Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) and his obnoxious, deranged midget assistant Ralphus (Luis De Jesus), that held performances mostly of humiliation, gruesome torture and murder - using real victims.

The performers in the staged productions were discovered to be white slavery female kidnap victims, who were held in cages below stage in the basement. Scenes of horror included human dart boards (a woman's backend was painted with a bullseye), flagellation, dismemberment, cannibalism, and the drilling of a hole in a woman's shaved skull to suck out her brains with a straw by a depraved doctor (Ernie Pysher).

Blue Velvet (1986)
D. David Lynch

Lynch's polarizing film was an original look at sex, violence, crime and power under the peaceful exterior of small-town Americana in the mid-80s. Beneath the familiar, peaceful, 'American-dream' cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurked sleaziness, prostitution, unrestrained violence, and perversity - powerful and potentially-dangerous sexual forces that might be unleashed if not contained.

It was considered controversial, shocking, and lurid when released. The compelling film was often criticized for its depiction of aberrant sexual behavior, as well as highly ridiculed and disdained as an extreme, dark, vulgar and disgusting film, especially for its cinematic treatment of Isabella Rossellini - director Lynch's wife at the time.

Its most repulsive scene was the one in which clean-cut, all-American boy/trekker Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) first voyeuristically watched the fragile nightclub singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) from her closet -- when she discovered him, she forced him to strip at knifepoint and fondled him -- but they were interrupted by the entry of a monstrous, loathsome, nitrous-oxide sniffing kidnapper - the evil, vile and depraved drug-pusher psycho Frank (Dennis Hopper). Beaumont witnessed the sexually-depraved, blackmailing relationship between the abused/brutalized, sado-machochistic mother and Frank - who used an oxygen inhaler while terrorizing and raping Dorothy as he play-acted being both her Daddy and Baby ("Baby wants to f--k"). After Frank left the scene of victimization, Dorothy pleaded with a consoling Beaumont to further abuse her: "Feel me. Hit me." Later in the film in a scene considered gratuitous and personally degrading, a vulnerable Dorothy appeared naked and battered on the Beaumont's front lawn.